You might say, “Well that is obvious.” But not so fast, when I ask the question, are you breathing? I am referring to life. Life in terms of what the Bible refers to as abundant life. Not just merely existing, but truly living and doing it with peace, love, and joy.

It's impossible to do that when you are addicted to alcohol and other drugs. Addiction robs abundant life and reduces an addicted person to merely existing. Over the course of time, I have met thousands of people whose lives were ripped apart by the “hell-hole of addiction,” reduced to merely existing.

I was one of those people. I spent 12 years addicted to various drugs. I started using marijuana when I was 12 years old. My addiction progressed until I was a full-blown crack-cocaine addict by the age of 22. By the grace of God, I was able to turn a hopeless, desperate situation into a place of hope.

My journey to hope began at the place of desperation.

Hopeless people are desperate people. The question is what do you do with the desperation? The answer is, there are many things that you can do, but only one-thing matters and that is to allow the desperation to lead to brokenness.

Rosalind Tompkins new books is due out in April.(Photo: Special to the Democrat)

Brokenness leads to searching for answers other than the ones that have been tried before. That’s what happened to me on my journey to hope. I had to try something different and take another path. The path that I was on was leading me nowhere but down real fast.

My pathway to hope through brokenness began when I was 19 years old. I was a sophomore at Florida State University and my daily diet consisted of drugs and alcohol. I had spent my young life partying and getting high as often as I could. I wasn't thinking about my health, exercising, or eating right.

The break came one day when I was home alone in my apartment. I can remember it as though it was yesterday.

The rest of the story is found in my soon to be released book, “As Long As There Is Breath In Your Body, There Is Still Hope” coming out in April. To preorder your digital copy today please visit Kindle https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07P5GK4ZC or iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/as-long-as-there-is-breath-in-your-body-there-is-still-hope/id1454314290?mt=11

Rosalind Y. Tompkins received a doctorate of humanities degree from the Five Fold Ministry Theological University in 2012. Find out more at www.Rosalindytompkins.
com.